Smith and the Pharaohs and other Tales

SMITH AND THE PHARAOHS AND OTHER TALES

was not an animal, the Spirits told him that it was not. Was it an article of dress? No, they did not think it was an article of dress, yet the Spirits seemed to suggest that it had something to do with dress. Was it a shoe? Was it scissors? Was it a comb? Was it a needle? No, but it was something that had to do with needles. What had to do with needles? Thread. Was it thread? No, but something that had to do with thread. Was it a silver shield which pushed the needle that drew the thread?

Here Tabitha could contain herself no longer, but clapped her hands and cried out delightedly:

"Yes, that's it. It's my thimble."

"Oh! very well," said Menzi, "but it is easy to discover what is lost and hard to find it."

Then followed another long examination of the assessors or acolytes, or witch-doctor's chorus, by which it was established at length that the thimble had been lost three days before, when Tabitha was sitting on a stone sewing, that she believed it had fallen into a crevice of rocks, and so forth.

After this the chorus was silent and Menzi himself took up the game, apparently asking questions of the sky and putting his ear to the ground for an answer.

At length he announced: (1) That the thimble was not among the rocks; (2) That it was not lost at all.

"But it is, it is, you silly old man," cried Tabitha excitedly. "I have hunted everywhere, and I cried about it because I haven't got another, and can't buy one here, and the needle hurts my finger."

Menzi contemplated her gravely as though he were looking her through and through.

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"It is not lost, Little Flower. I see it; you have it now. Put your hand into the pocket of your dress. What do you find there?"

"Nothing," said Tabitha. "That is, nothing except a hole." "Feel at the bottom of your dress, there on the right. No,

a little more to the front. What do you feel there?" "Something hard," said Tabitha.

"Take this knife and cut the lining of your dress where you feel the hard thing. Ah! there is the silver shield which you have been carrying about with you all these days."

The crowd murmured approval. Dorcas exclaimed: "Well, I never!" and Thomas looked first puzzled, then angry, then suspicious.

"Does the Teacher think that the Floweret and the old doctor have made a plot together?" asked Menzi. "Can a sweet Flower make plots and tell lies like the old doctor? Well, well, it is nothing. Now let us try something better. My bags, my bags."

Thomas made as though he would go away, but Menzi stopped him, saying:

"No, doubters must stay to see the end of their doubts. What shall I do? Ah! I have it."

Then from one of the bags he drew out a number of crooked black sticks that looked like bent ebony rulers, and built them up criss-cross in a little pile upon the ground. Next he found some bundles of fine dried grass, which he thrust into the interstices between the sticks, as he did so bidding one of his servants to run to the nearest hut and bring a coal of fire upon a sherd.

"A match will not do," he said. "White men have touched it."

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Presently the burning ember arrived, and muttering something, Menzi blew upon it as though to keep it alight.

"Now, White Teacher," he said in a voice that had suddenly become commanding, "think of something. Think of what you will, and I will show it to you."

"Indeed," said Thomas with a smile. "I have thought of something; now make good your words."

Menzi thrust the ember into the haylike fibres and blew. They caught and blazed up fiercely, making an extraordinarily large flame considering the small amount of the kindling. The ebony-like sticks also began to blaze. Menzi grew excited.

"My Spirit, come to me; my Spirit, come to me!" he cried. "O my Spirit, show this White Teacher Tombool that I am not a cheat!"

He ran round and round the fire; he leapt into the air, then suddenly shouted: "My Spirit has entered into me; my Snake is in my breast!"

All his excitement went; he grew quite calm, almost cataleptic. Holding his thin hands over the fire, slowly he let them fall, and as he did so the fierce flames died down.

"It's going out," said Tabitha.

Menzi smiled at her and lifted his hands again. Lo! the fire that seemed to be dead leapt up after them in a fierce blaze. Again he dropped his hands and the fire died away. Then he moved his arms to and fro and it came back, following the motions of his arms as though he drew it by a string.

"Have you thought, White Teacher? Have you thought?" he asked. "Good! Arise, smoke!"

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Behold, instead of the clear flame appeared a fan-shaped column of dense white smoke, behind which Menzi vanished, all except his outstretched hands.

"Look on to the smoke, White people, and do you, Little Flower, tell me what you see there," he called from behind this vaporous veil.

Tabitha stared, they all stared. Then she cried out:

"I see a room, I see an old man in a clergyman's coat reading a letter. Why, it is the Dean whom we used to know in Natal. There's the wart on his nose and the tuft of hair that hangs down over his eye, and he's reading a letter written by Father. I know the writing. It begins, 'My dear Dean, Providence has appointed me to a strange place'"

"Is that what you see also, Teacher?" asked Menzi. "And if so, is it what you pictured in your thought?"

Thomas turned away and uttered something like a groan, for indeed he had thought of the Dean and of the letter he had written to him a month before.

"The Teacher is not satisfied," said Menzi. "If he had seen all he thought of, being so good and honest, he would tell us. There is some mistake. My Spirit must have deceived me. Think of something else, Teacher, and tell the lady, and the child Imba, and Kosa, and another, what it is you are thinking of. Go aside and tell them where I cannot hear."

Thomas did so – in some way he felt compelled to do so. "I am going to think of the church as I propose it shall be

when finished according to the plans I have made," he said hoarsely. "I am going to think of it with a belfry spire roofed with red tiles and a clock in the tower, and I am going to

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think of the clock as pointing to the exact hour of noon. Do you all understand? It is impossible that this man should know of how I mean to build that spire and about the clock, because until this moment no one knew except myself. If he can show me that, I shall begin to believe that he is inspired by his master, the devil. Do you all understand?"

They said they did, and Menzi called out:

"Be quick, White Teacher. Be quick, I grow tired. My Spirit grows tired. The smoke grows tired. Come, come, come!"

They returned and stood in front of the fire, and in obedience to Menzi's motions once more the fan of smoke arose. On it grew something nebulous, something uncertain that by degrees took the form of a church. It was not very clear, perhaps because Thomas found it difficult to conceive the exact shape of the church as it would be when it was finished, or only conceived it bit by bit. One thing, however, was very distinct in his mind, and that was the proposed spire and the clock. As a result, there was the spire standing at the end of the shadowy church vivid and distinct. And there was the clock with its two copper hands exactly on the stroke of noon!

"Tell me what you see, Little Flower," said Menzi in a hollow voice.

"I see what Father told me he would think of, a church and the spire of the church, and the clock pointing to twelve."

"Do you all see that," asked Menzi, "and is it what the Teacher said he would think about?"

"Yes, Doctor," they answered.

"Then look once more, for I will think of something. I will think of that church falling. Look once more."

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They looked, and behold the shadowy fabric began to totter, then it seemed to collapse, and last of all down went the spire and vanished in the smoke.

"Have you seen anything, O people?" said Menzi, "for standing behind this smoke I can see nothing. Mark that it is thick, since through it I am invisible to you."

This was true, since they could only perceive the tips of his outstretched fingers appearing upon each side of the smokefan.

"Yes," they answered, "we have seen a church fall down and vanish."

"That was my thought," said Menzi; "have I not told you that was the thought my Spirit gave me?"

"This is black magic, and you are a fiend!" shouted Thomas, and was silent.

"Not so, Tombool, though it is true that I have gifts which you clever White people do not understand," answered Menzi.

By degrees the smoke melted away, and there on the ground were the ten or twelve crooked pieces of ebony that they had seen consumed, now to all appearance quite untouched by the flame. There too on their farther side lay Menzi, shining with perspiration, and in a swoon or sleeping.

"Come away," said Thomas shortly, and they turned to go, but at this moment something happened.

Menzi, it will be remembered, had given Tabitha a kid of a long-haired variety of goat peculiar to these parts. This little creature had already grown attached to its mistress and walked about after her, in the way which pet goats have. It

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had followed her that morning, but not being interested in tricks or magic, engaged itself in devouring herbs that grew amongst the tumbled stones of the old kraal.

Suddenly Menzi recovered from his faint or seizure and, looking up, directed his attendants to return the magical ebony rods which burned without being consumed to one of the hide bags that contained his medicines. The assembly began to break up amidst a babel of excited talk.

Tabitha looked round for her goat, and perceiving it at a little distance, ran to fetch it, since the creature, being engaged in eating something to its taste, would not come at her call. She seized it by the neck to drag it away, with the result that its forefeet, obstinately set upon the wall, overturned a large stone, revealing a great puff adder that was sleeping there.

The reptile thus disturbed instantly struck backwards after the fashion of its species, so that its fangs, just missing Tabitha's hands, sank deep into the kid's neck. She screamed and there was a great disturbance. A native ran forward and pinned down the puff-adder with his walking-stick of which the top was forked. The kid immediately fell on to its side, and lay there bleeding and bleating. Tabitha began to weep, calling out, "My goat is killed," between her sobs.

Menzi, distinguishing her voice amid the tumult, asked what was the matter. Someone told him, whereon he commanded that the kid should be brought to him and the snake also. This was done, Tabitha following her dying pet with her mother, for by now Thomas had departed, taking no heed of these events, which perhaps he was too disturbed to notice.

"Save my goat! Save my goat, O Menzi!" implored Tabitha.

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The old witch-doctor looked at the animal, also at the hideous puffadder that had been dragged along the ground in the fork of the stick.

"It will be hard, Little Flower," he said, "seeing that the goat is bitten in the neck and this snake is very poisonous. Still for your sake I will try, although I fear that it may prove but a waste of good medicine."

Then he took one of his bags and from it selected a certain packet wrapped in a dried leaf, out of which he shook some grey powder. Seizing the kid, which seemed to be almost dead, he made an incision in its throat over the wound, and into it rubbed some of this powder. Next he spat upon more of the powder, thus turning it into a paste, and opening the kid's mouth, thrust it down its throat, at the same time muttering an invocation or spell.

"Now we must wait," he said, letting the kid fall upon the ground, where it lay to all appearance dead.

"Is that powder any good?" asked Dorcas rather aimlessly. "Yes, it is very good, Lady; a medicine of power of which I alone have the secret, a magic medicine. See, I will show you.

Except the immamba, the ring-snake that puffs out its head, this one is the most deadly in our country. Yet I do not fear it. Look!"

Leaning forward, he seized the puff-adder, and drawing it from beneath the fork, suffered it to strike him upon the breast, after which he deliberately killed it with a stone. Then he took some of the grey powder and rubbed it into the punctures; also put more of it into his mouth, which he swallowed.

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"Oh!" exclaimed Dorcas, "he will die," and some of the Christian Kaffirs echoed her remark.

But Menzi did not die at all. On the contrary, after shivering a few times he was quite himself, and, indeed, seemed rather brighter than before, like a jaded business man who has drunk a cocktail.

"No, Wife of Tombool," he said, "I shall not die; every year I doctor myself with this magic medicine that is called Dawa, after which all the snakes in Sisa-Land – remember that they are many, Little Flower – may bite me if they like."

"Is it your magic or is it the medicine that protects you?" asked Dorcas.

"Both, Lady. The medicine Dawa is of no use without the magic words, and the magic words are of no use without the medicine. Therefore alone in all the land I can cure snake bites, who have both medicine and magic. Look at your goat, Little Flower. Look at your goat!"

Tabitha looked, as did everyone else. The kid was rising to its feet. It rose, it baa'd and presently began to frisk about its mistress, like Menzi apparently rather brighter than before.

V

A year had gone by, during which time, by the most heroic exertions, Thomas Bull had at length succeeded in rebuilding the church. There it stood, a very nice mission-church, constructed of sun-dried bricks neatly plastered over, cool and spacious within, for the thatched roof was lofty, beautifully furnished (the font and the pulpit had been imported from England), and finished off with the spire and clock of his

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dreams, the latter also imported from England and especially adjusted for a hot climate.

Moreover, there was a sweet and loud-throated bell upon which the clock struck, with space allowed for the addition of others that must wait till Thomas could make up his mind to approach Dorcas as to the provision of the necessary funds. Yes, the church was finished, and the Bishop of those parts had made a special journey to consecrate it at the hottest season of the year, and as a reward for his energy had contracted fever and nearly been washed away in a flooded river.

Only one thing was lacking, a sufficient congregation to fill this fine church, which secretly the Bishop, who was a sensible man, thought would have been of greater value had it been erected in any of several other localities that he could have suggested. For alas! the Christian community of SisaLand did not increase. Occasionally Thomas succeeded in converting one of Menzi's followers, and occasionally Menzi snatched a lamb from the flock of Thomas, with the result that the scales remained even neither going up nor down.

The truth was, of course, that the matter was chiefly one of race; those of the Sisas in whom the Basuto blood preponderated became Christian, while those who were of the stubborn Zulu stock, strengthened and inspired by their prophet Menzi, remained unblushingly heathen.

Still Thomas did not despair. One day, he told himself, there would be a great change, a veritable landslide, and he would see that church filled with every Zulu in the district. Needless to say, he wished him no ill, but Menzi was an old man, and before long it might please Providence to gather

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